I wish. D26 can’t due to sports. She does have a 4 days weekend for Rosh Hashanna but needs to be back by Saturday night for a practice on Sunday. Most of the schools are far enough away that it would make for a very $$ two days to only see 1 school. We will take her in April when she has a week off.
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I want to but hard to schedule since we don’t have days off besides thanksgiving and there is no way I am traveling that week. The schools we want to check are on the east coast so most likely we will wait until April and take a trip during spring break.
We live in the Bay Area so there are plenty of schools in so cal he’s interested I will try and see if we can find a 3-4 day weekend to head down.
No word back from Taco Bell. But she applied today at a different location and has an interview for the other location next weekend! 
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In my area, all sorts of employers make it seem like they can’t get enough employees since covid, and they use it as an excuse for less service, but then they do things like this. It’s absurd. I hope she finds something soon!
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Same in our area! It is actually hard to get a basic, minimum wage job. One of my college kids struggled to find anything.
Taking it one step further, even volunteer positions are competitive for high schoolers in my city. My D26 recently submitted a volunteer application and resume at a local hospital for a volunteer spot. It is one of the few hospitals that will even take volunteers under age 18. She is keeping her fingers crossed for an interview! So far, no reply
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D26 received word from 2 McDonald’s she applied to that they’re interested in interviewing her. But still waiting on word for when the interview will be.
I’m not too concerned about her extracurriculars. I know that pretty much all colleges consider paid part-time jobs to be a legitimate extracurricular. It’ll all happen in good time. It’s just frustrating when employers say they have minimum wage part time job openings, and then you apply for the job, and you hear nothing back. Huh…ok, then what you’re really saying is that you want somebody who’s EXPERIENCED and is willing to work for minimum wage.
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Right basically someone with no choice. S26 has plans for a summer internship but if those fall through (ver probable since it’s so competitive) he wants to work at Starbucks. Great idea imo it gets him money and experience dealing with customers.
D26 & I had a conversation today about something I heard on yesterday’s episode of the Your College Bound Kid podcast (“27 factors in evaluating colleges”). Recommendation was for parent(s) to prioritize the list of 27 factors. Have your kid do the same on their own. Then you compare your lists and talk about it.
So we did that. Didn’t take too long. Whole thing start to finish was about 15 min. Here’s D26’s current list in her own priority order:
- strength in your major
- career outcomes
- food
- overall academic excellence
- weather
- distance from home
- cost/affordability
- experiential learning
- facilities
- student support
- class size
- friendliness
- graduation rates
- safety
- area surrounding the college
- diversity
- single gender vs coed
- school size
- commuter vs residential
- campus setting: urban, suburban, rural, remote, college town
- sports/school spirit
- college rankings
- campus beauty
- nature & green spaces
- religious environment/affiliation
- political climate
- name recognition
So then we talked about it a bit. It was a great conversation because she explained a little bit of why she ranked each factor in that order. It shed some light on what she’s thinking of and I learned that our & her top 10 are very similar.
I asked her a bit about weather and distance from home. She said that snow a few times in the winter would be ok, but not ok if snow blankets the ground almost the whole 3 months of winter. So that was helpful to know. She also said that anywhere on the east coast is out of the question because that constitutes “too far.” I kind of figured she would say that, but it was good to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.
She said that in school today, they had all of the 9th, 10th, and 11th graders do a PSAT “stress test” on the school’s LAN in preparation for the October PSAT. She said that she and some other kids in her class couldn’t get the PSAT app to work during the stress test. I thought that was interesting.
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We went to a presentation about college for junior parents by our school’s college counseling department tonight. I don’t think this department existed when D19 was there, and everything was via their “regular” counselors at that stage (who were not particularly helpful given the sheer volume of general counseling work they also had). I was really impressed by them tonight - they are really on top of things and have good, and practical, action plans. I also liked that they now incorporate the college essay/personal narrative into all junior level English courses - D19 did that with an outside college counselor.
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Our school district put on a college and career fair earlier this week and S26 attended. I think there were more employers than colleges (not surprising, because we have a lot of manufacturing in our area and they are looking to attract the kids while still in HS). He ended up talking to only three colleges. LSU, Ole Miss and Louisiana Tech. Louisiana Tech has been a really popular school among boys in our area for the last few years. I wish he would have taken the chance to talk to some SLACs that were there. But SLACs are not very popular in our neck of the woods.
He is honing in on a business major maybe coupled with international relations or international business. Tulane has the perfect program for him (Altman program, a double degree in business and international relations). He might just squeak into Tulane but is not competitive for Altman with his current GPA and ACT. So now he is looking for schools where double majoring across schools is ok. And he is also diving deeper on business or management majors.
I think that’s a good start. Now we’ll see if we can cobble together some college visits for fall break.
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FWIW, one of the selling points of Tulane is the ability to easily double major. Although your son might not be a candidate for Altman, which has very specific classes and study abroad, you may want to inquire about the ability to double major Business/IR. It might not be the “Altman Program” but probably 85% the same.
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I’ve heard through the grapevine that Tulane is really big on applicants demonstrating interest, so something to keep in mind.
Apparently (info from last night) Tulane takes something like 60% of its class in the early round - not sure the split between ED and EA of that. D19 applied there EA and they called her to ask if she wanted to change it to ED before the decision date (she’d already ED’d elsewhere so that was a no), apparently this is not uncommon for them. It wasn’t clear to us that it would have significantly improved her chances or just something they want to do for stats.
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Tulane takes some flak for their admissions approach. They want to accept potential students that they believe have a high likelihood of attending. They are very big on demonstrated interest (engage with the school, focus on the “why Tulane” essays), etc. There’s no bigger demonstrated interest than ED. The last 2 reporting cycles, which doesn’t include last year yet, they took 68% of the incoming class in ED/ED2. You’ll see it stated as yield protection.
Yes, it is a common tactic - for most schools that have an ED2 - to try and convince applicants that apply EA to switch to ED2.
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Looks like D26 now also has a job interview on Saturday at a sandwich shop near us. Woo!
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Going to make my first post here after lurking for a few months on the site.
Our D26 will be heading to college in Fall 2026.
The college world is very different today than it was when we went. As a result we had to become reoriented with the current processes and challenges. As a result, there’s been countless hours of planning, discussions, etc. and feel prepared for the challenges ahead.
Anyways… just wanted to drop a post here saying we’ve joined the ‘ride’ with everyone else.
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Welcome!
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Homecoming weekend at school this week. X26 is not big on sport but is part of the choir singing the national anthem at the opening so may stay to watch the game tonight if their friends do. Dance tomorrow. Some kind of volunteering opportunity arose for Sunday (I’m not exactly clear on it but it looks like something to do with entertaining seniors) so we’ll be doing a lot of driving! They only turn 16 next month but even then it’s probably going to be a while before they get their drivers license (sigh)
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S26’s sister is a junior at Tulane 
And, yes, it is a great school for double majoring across different schools. Some of D22’s friends have pretty exotic major/major or major/minor combinations. She will most likely graduate with two degrees from two different schools within Tulane. So, for anybody who is looking for a lot of flexibility, this is a good school. She was accepted EA two years ago and so were almost all of her friends (coincidentally she knows very few kids who did ED).
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